From: David Buchanan (DBuchanan@ClassicalRadio.org)
Date: Sat Oct 26 2002 - 21:45:23 BST
Steve said:
One sense of the word that has been discussed is judgment as discriminating.
As has been pointed out, it is ridiculous to discourage distinguishing or
discriminating and impossible to reject judging in this sense of the word,
and this is not what is discouraged in Christianity.
DMB says:
Ridiculous and impossible. Exactly. To discern and discriminate is certainly
NOT discouraged in philosophy, nor in the MOQ. From Lila, page 156. "The MOQ
says that if moral judgments are essentially assertions of value and if
value is the fundamental ground-stuff of the world, then moral judgments are
the fundamental ground-stuff of the world. It says that even at the most
fundamental level of the universe, static patterns of value and moral
judgmement are identical."
Steve said:
Condemning is to judge in a way that is reserved only for God in Christian
and perhaps Jewish theology. ("Vengeance is mine", says the Lord, i.e. It
doesn't belong to the Christian coalition.) To condemn is to damn. (Maybe
someone out there has easy access to the OED and can verify this for me, but
I think the word "condemn" itself is related to the word "damn.") Damning
assumes an understanding of hell, which none if us probably see as a place
that bad people go to when they die. Hell is a state of earthly existence.
(I think Pirsig had something to say on the subject?)
DMB says:
Pirsig discusses "Zen hell" in chapter 20, in relation to those mirrors,
celebrity, fame, fortune and all those other third level forces that have so
much effect on our sense of identity. On page 254 he says, "you split into
two people, who they think you are and who you really are, and that produces
the Zen hell. Its like a hall of mirrors at a carnival where some mirrors
distort you one way and some distort you another." Pirsig points out else
where that it is the gods that control these mirrors. The social level's
rewards and condemnations are manifest in the faces of others, is reflected
in the eyes of others in countless obvious and mysterious ways, everyday,
all the time.
Steve said:
The way I most clearly hear others condemn people is to claim that by doing
such and such a thing, such and such a person is no longer human. If all
agree to this condemnation, the condemned person would literally be in
"societal hell." (This is the most extreme condemnation, and it can be more
subtle.)
DMB says:
Right. This is the great danger, the big one that shows how inappropriate
and inadequate such social level forces can become. The kind of condemnation
that denies a person's humanity is the kind that leads to racism, sexism,
jingoism, slavery, war and genocide. This is the kind of thing Darrel was
trying to get at, but he'd conflated it with our capacity for moral
reasoning and thereby threw out the very tool needed to combat such horrors.
Steve said:
Christian theology rejects this sort of condemnation. Christian theology
includes the idea that one's humanity cannot be forfeited and has influenced
society. In fact, this is can be seen as the basis of Christian faith. To
say that someone is not human is about the least Christian thing a person
could say. The Christian understanding of humanity is that there is that of
God in everyone. This is the most important innovation that Jesus offered.
Not everyone chooses to view humanity in this way, but I think that there is
value in rejecting judging in the sense of condemnation. I think that if
such an ethic achieves static latch in society it will create a stronger
society. To a certain degree, static latch has been achieved in such moral
claims as "all men are created equal."
DMB says:
Right. Several people have said something similar to this, including myself
on 10/19:
These quotes present some very key ideas. Notice that they both refer to the
divinity in us all. "As a child of God everyone is equal to everyone else"
and "you are children of the living father". This is the cosmic identity I
tried to talk about in my 4L+DQ=1 post.
I think the sense of divine equality expressed in the quote extends a
certain dignity and respect for every individual. And it seems like no
accident that life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, the rights we all
share equally, is said to have been endowed by the creator. Even on a mythic
and dramatic level, Jesus is a herald of the intellect, being tortured and
killed for nothing more than speaking his mind. He's Socrates on a stick.
That's the intellectual improvement on the social code. It speaks to freedom
of belief and conscience as well as the cruelty and injustice of society.
In conclusion, I have to say that the issue is hardly debatable. The MOQ is
all about moral judgments. The author takes great pride in the fact that his
MOQ provides a rational and scientific way to make moral judgments, one that
even explians the moral value of equal rights and other evolved principles.
Thanks for your time,
DMB
MOQ.ORG - http://www.moq.org
Mail Archive - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/
MD Queries - horse@darkstar.uk.net
To unsubscribe from moq_discuss follow the instructions at:
http://www.moq.org/md/subscribe.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Nov 01 2002 - 10:38:03 GMT